Sonos has had a rough couple of years. A botched app redesign, executive shakeups, product cancellations, and a stock price that’s been doing its best impression of a broken subwoofer.
So when the company announced two new speakers, the collective reaction from the audio world was somewhere between cautious optimism and “please, just don’t mess it up.”
The Sonos Play: A portable speaker with bigger ambitions
The headline addition is the Sonos Play — a $299 portable speaker that the company is positioning as its most versatile yet.
On paper, it’s genuinely interesting: IP67 waterproofing, 24 hours of battery life, a built-in power bank that can charge your phone, and a removable utility loop for carrying it around.
The audio setup runs three Class-H digital amplifiers, two angled tweeters, and a midwoofer, with Automatic Trueplay tuning that continuously adjusts sound to wherever you happen to be.
The more compelling feature, though, is multi-speaker Bluetooth grouping — something Sonos has never done before. Away from home, you can now connect a Sonos Play to your phone and sync up to three additional Play or Move 2 speakers directly over Bluetooth.
Bluetooth grouping finally arrives for Sonos
For anyone who’s ever tried to get Sonos working without a WiFi connection, that’s a bigger deal than it sounds.
Alongside the Play, Sonos also announced the Era 100 SL at $189 — a mic-free, stripped-back version of the Era 100 aimed at people who want a clean entry point into the Sonos ecosystem without the voice assistant overhead. Both are available for pre-order now at sonos.com, with general availability on March 31.
The battery in the Play is also replaceable — a small detail that, given everything Sonos has been through lately, feels like a deliberate signal that they’re thinking longer-term this time.